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Opinion

Friday, Sept. 13, will be an historic day in Henry County. That evening, both of Kentucky’s United States Senators — Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul — along with 4th District United States Congressman Thomas Massie, Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture James Comer, State Senators Ernie Harris and Paul Hornback, State Representative David Osborne and other area Republican leaders will all come out to Pendleton for a multi-county Grand Ol’ Party Rally.

The General Assembly returned to re-draw the geographic lines that govern the 100-member House and the 38-member Senate.
It’s something we and every other state are called upon to do each decade, to reflect the differences in population found by the Census.

Hello. I’m Paul Hornback, and I am honored to be your new state Senator, representing Carroll, Henry, Shelby and Trimble Counties, as well as part of Jefferson.
You may be wondering how this has happened, especially since my friend, Senator Ernie Harris, has served you well, so let me explain. After each U.S. Census, it is the Constitutional duty of the state legislature to realign voting districts according to population shifts. This week, we did just that as the Senate and the House passed legislation that drew new district lines.

Monday, the General Assembly began a special session called by Governor Beshear, to finish what should have been done a year ago. Redistricting. The Governor hopes the special session, which will cost over $60,000 a day, will only last five days, to “minimize the cost to taxpayers.”

By law, the Commonwealth must reassess census data, and move House, Senate and Judicial districts as the population moves, so that districts have about the same population, across the state, to assure balanced representation.

In today’s data-driven age, there is no shortage of comparative lists that states can use to check the progress they’re making. The rankings may not shed much light individually, but when enough are brought together, a much clearer picture begins to emerge.
With that in mind, Kentucky and 14 of her fellow southern states got a chance earlier this summer to see how each stacks up in some especially crucial areas.

We may be a little more than halfway through 2013, but in Washington and state governments across the country, the focus is increasingly on federal actions taken in 2011.
The issue can be summed up in one word: sequestration.

I latched onto music at the same time my interest in literature exploded.

Everyone has their own taste in music and literature, and each genre serves an individual purpose. I relax listening to Chopin or Nick Drake and rock out to the Rolling Stones or the Black Keys. When it comes to country though, I don’t put on this terrible pop fluff that everyone calls new country. My attendance at the Froggy Field Party 5 confirmed that.

Over the years, I’ve rented many apartments and a house or two. If I’d known then what I learned Monday night during the Pleasureville City Commission meeting, I surely could’ve gotten a break on my rent.

For example, any time I’d not spent every day in the place I was renting, my landlord should’ve given me a break.

I also learned that simply by cleaning the apartment once a week, my landlords could have taken a little more off.

Saturday I traveled to Western Kentucky to a political junkie’s Woodstock—Fancy Farm.

The St. Jerome Catholic Church Picnic, in Fancy Farm, Kentucky, began in 1880. Happy Chandler is credited for making it the political event it has become known as today, when he visited the picnic in 1931, campaigning for lieutenant governor. He won that year, and believed Fancy Farm was his good luck charm, so he kept going back.

Why on earth do we go out on a hot day with mosquitoes buzzing us and tiring ourselves picking berries? It would be so much easier just to purchase them at the grocery store. And it certainly would be less work. Why do we do it? Because they’re blueberries!

It would be different if it was berry picking for the wonderfully delicious blackberries grown in Kentucky. Never mind the chiggers, the heat, and snakes; blackberries are worth all the inconveniences.

You will find in this week’s issue my one tank trip to Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill.

Shaker Village isn’t exactly somewhere one would go to for a high-octane night on the town or expect to find anything on the cutting edge. I refute that expectation. Shaker Village gives something new to the visitor each time they visit.

The Shakers stood on the cutting edge of technology when it came to farming and household goods. We all know that, but the less commonly known cutting edge elements of their culture lies in their society.

Growing up, my dad subscribed to Popular Mechanics. I loved going through the issues and seeing the things that would be around when I became an adult. The issues predicted things like hover cars, personal jet packs and condos on the moon. I’m still waiting for my jet pack.

Something that is more startling, and grounded in reality, is what Henry County will look like in the year 2050.

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”

That old saying is attributed to Mark Twain. Obviously, he was never around that trembling, drooling little chihuahua that would perch atop the arm of my aunt’s couch when we would visit, yapping loudly and incessantly at nothing in particular, and irritating everyone (but my aunt) to no end.

As I sit to write this, it is July 4, Independence Day. I am reminded that 237 years ago, 56 men who put their John Hancock to a piece of paper, signing what could have been their death warrant.

Those now famous words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”